Message to Love - The Isle of Wight Festival
by Murray Lerner
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Actor: Emerson Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Moody Blues, The WhoDirector: Murray Lerner
Brand: Sony
Producer: Murray Lerner
Editor: Einar Westerlund
Producer: Avril MacRory
Producer: Geoff Kempin
Producer: Malcolm Gerrie
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 127 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1997-12-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Music Video
DVD Reviews of Message to Love - The Isle of Wight Festival
DVD Review: The Magic and the Misery
Summary: 3 Stars
Due to numerous issues, "Message To Love: The Isle of Wight Festival" didn't reach theaters until 1997. Not sure if it was worth the wait. The 1970 multi-day concert it covers was so gargantuan that it would have been better served with a three-hour running time. Clocking in at 127 minutes, "Message To Love" feels incomplete, with multiple performers making rushed cameo appearances. Additional footage (and perhaps modern day interviews) is needed to fully detail the complex chaos of this festival.
The 1960's concert documentary first appeared on the scene with Monterey Pop - Criterion Collection in 1968. Multi-day concerts were a phenomenon of the 60s, emerging from the well of youth, music and anti-Vietnam War rebellion during the Summer of Love 1967. What began with Monterey Pop arguably ended in England at this Isle of Wight Fest three years later. "Message To Love" is an intentional contrast to Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut), the documentary of an equally gigantic fest held a year before in New York. By the end of that brilliant film, which runs three-plus hours, one is blissfully exhausted with the unique feeling of having been a part of those famous days. "Message To Love" does not capture a similar, overall essence of its event.
The film intentionally details the ugliness of what these festivals became. Promoters hoped to turn a profit, with the event attracting an astounding 600,000 British and American fans for five days of music on the island off the coast of England. Promoters designed an ill-fated system of fences, manned by guards and dogs, in an attempt to force attendees to pay admission. "Message To Love" accurately shows the hippie's efforts at tearing down these fences (it's always the fences). According to them, this was their "festival" and they were not going to participate in "evil" capitalism. Ironically, the bands would not perform unless paid in advance, and eventually promoter Rikki Farr (a true character) throws up his hands in frustration, accepting financial loss.
The lineup was perhaps the most interesting in history, including Jimi Hendrix Isle of Wight '70 (just days before his death), The Doors The Doors Collection (Collector's Edition) (with one of Jim Morrison's final performances), The Who Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970 (Special Edition), Miles Davis, Donovan, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Kris Kristofferson, John Sebastian and Ten Years After. Young acts on the verge of becoming 70's staples included Tiny Tim, Free (with a young Paul Rodgers), The Moody Blues, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Leonard Cohen and Jethro Tull. Additional performers, including Chicago, Melanie, Supertramp, Richie Havens and Sly & The Family Stone are sadly (and unwisely) left on the cutting room floor. With few exceptions, none of the acts are documented particularly well, and the coverage provided Davis, Donovan and Baez is criminally short. This concert was a unique musical bridge connecting the 60s to the 70s, though this is only hinted at.
The camera weaves through the audience on occasion (though not enough), mainly to the caravan of gypsy-hippies camped on the hill overlooking the festival. Most fans interviewed are British, having adopted the aura of rebellion from the States. The most violent protesters are, interestingly, the Americans. They are a rough mob threatening the guards while contemplating their own drug use (and shockingly that of their children) next to damp campfires.
With the exception of The Moody Blues' Classic Moody Blues performance of "Nights In White Satin," the live acts are surprisingly uninspiring, owing much to the odd pillbox-like stage they were forced to perform in. Contrasted with the sweeping, outdoor stage of Woodstock, it's no wonder fans became restless. The Who and Ten Years After Anthology 1967-1971 are fine as usual. Even Jim Morrison, now adorned in the long beard of his later career, has an animated moment as he smiles at Robby Krieger during "The End." Still, there's a rushed feeling to "Message To Love." The scene of the elderly hippie interrupting Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi performance to rant on stage about the fences is a highlight. The incident reduces Mitchell to tears while backstage, in what is one of the film's most extraordinary scenes, the manic hippie, eyes dilated, spouts nonsense in an apparent acid-induced frenzy. With much trouble, he his forcefully escorted away, arms and legs flailing about.
"Message To Love" is missing similar intimate detail to properly flesh out these closing, final days of acid and roses. There was an opportunity here for historical greatness. The great abundance of magic and misery could have been better conveyed.
Description of Message to Love - The Isle of Wight Festival
MESSAGE TO LOVE: ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIV - DVD MovieThis documentary by Murray Lerner (From Mao to Mozart) was shot in 1970, but for many reasons was not shown to the public until 1995 in Great Britain. In an important way, it is the final chapter in an unofficial trilogy of concert films (along with Woodstock and Gimme Shelter) that together paint a picture of the highest and lowest points of Woodstock Nation politics: from mass goodwill to anarchy to outright stupidity. On the one hand, Message to Love is a rock & roll movie with several performances that are outright revelations (the Who's triumphant show, the Doors' "The End"), some that are awfully good (Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun"), and more than enough that are superfluous (Ten Days After, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Jethro Tull). On the other hand, Lerner's cameras are trained on the increasingly testy relationship between nomadic hippies who travel a long way to see the show but refuse to pay, and concert producers who resort to using guard dogs, cops, and aluminum walls to keep crashers at a distance. Just how bad does the mood become after several days of this? Check out the scene in which Joni Mitchell breaks down in tears after singing her ode to peace and love, "Woodstock," before this lot. In an era when we've become used to extraordinary security and high ticket prices at rock concerts, it's perhaps hard to grasp what the fuss was about at the Isle of Wight. But Lerner's amazing film helps a viewer get a sense of what was really at stake in that period before rock & roll was a corporate matter, and when kids naively thought it was theirs for the taking. --Tom Keogh
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